MMA News

Dana White: ‘I Want Every Dime Of That [Bonus Money] To Go Out The Door.’

Dana White is quite the polarizing figure, in the world of mixed martial arts. You either like his style, or you hate his attitude.

He can be brash. He can be rude. He can be vulgar, bluntly honest, and vitriolic with his statements, if you get him upset. But this is a man who spent the last decade, fighting tooth and nail for the success he now has. Of course he can be a bit apathetic… a bit crass.

But he can also be quite generous.

Two weeks ago, the UFC decided to change the post-fight bonus structure. It was doing away with “Submission of the Night” and “Knockout of the Night”, instead opting for the much more ambiguous “Performance of the Night” bonus, which will now accompany the “Fight of the Night” bonus.

Why, you ask?

To make sure that UFC fighters get every dime that they can get.

When an event has a lot of decisions, like UFC 169 (10 decisions), or UFC Fight Night 36 (also 10 decisions), the bonus money that would have gone to “Submission of the Night”, or sometimes “Knockout of the Night”, is kept in the UFC’s coffers, instead of it going out to a fighter who could really use that added payday.

Dana White told MMAjunkie that while it’s a rarity that bonus money stayed behind like that, the new method (which White came up with alongside CEO Lorenzo Fertitta) is a guarantee that all the money set aside for the awards will end up in a fighter’s pocket.

“It only happened a couple times,” White told MMAjunkie following Saturday’s UFC 170 pay-per-view at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. “I started playing with this thing and started to realize, because we’re doing so many fights, how much money it was – it’s like $9.8 million. I want every dime of that $9.8 million to go out the door.”

“The way it works (now) is, money goes out the door,” White said. “I don’t want there to be a situation where there was no submission, there was no this, there was no that. In this setup, it’s impossible for a bonus not to go out – unless the fights suck so bad one night.”

Both of the “Performance of the Night” bonuses will be set at $50,000, although the UFC has the ability to raise the bonus from that watermark for special occasions.

And while the words “Submission” and “Knockout” have been swapped out for the more modest “Performance”, a fighter’s best chance at a bonus is still a submission or a knock out.

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